Fulsås, Narve, and Rem, Tore (eds.) Ibsen in Context.

Abstract

Written by leading Ibsen scholars, the thirty relatively short essays that constitute Ibsen in Context provide readers with a clear overview of the key contexts that have informed Ibsen’s life, work, and status as a world dramatist. More specifically this collection challenges the practice of isolating the dramatist from his socio-historical contexts and treating his final twelve plays in particular as a self-contained aesthetic whole. On the premise that Ibsen, “could not escape his own context, and that literary autonomy is itself contingent on extra-literary preconditions, like the ability to live from one’s authorship, being protected by copyright, or being received with a certain reverence in appropriating cultures” (xvi), the essays embed the playwright into five general categories: “Life and Career,” “Culture and Society,” “Scandinavian Reception,” “Internationalization,” and “Afterlives.” This holistic contextualization of Ibsen from the time of his writing until today broadens the interpretative possibilities for his works and underscores the importance of the larger socio-cultural European and global contexts for the dramatist. The first three essays that make up Part I, “Life and Career,” are all written by Narve Fulsås and trace the cultural and sociopolitical Scandinavian contexts of Ibsen's early life and writing. Of particular focus are Ibsen’s practical theatrical experiences in Bergen and Kristiania, and importantly his relationship to Gyldendal publishing house and its head, Frederik V. Hegel. Fulsås suggests Ibsen’s association with Gyldendal resulted in a shift of focus from performance to book culture and ensured an